Cravings
by SecretTwin
Summary: Anything tastes delectable covered in chocolate. The most bitter truths can be sweetened and cruelty softened to tenderness. Paul Marshall is a connoisseur at coating his transgressions with a suave smile and a bar of his famous chocolate. Warning: Non-con/Underage


**I recently watched _Atonement_ and greatly desired to write a pov from the horrid Paul Marshall, played by the delightful Benedict Cumberbatch. If you haven't seen _Atonement_ , you should probably know that this contains spoilers.**

 **I own nothing.**

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I fed her chocolate in the hours after they took the garden boy. The lamb took to sucking on the little squares she broke off and letting them melt in her mouth. Her small, plump lips worked slowly. I envied the chocolate. I know what those little lips feel like against my palm.

"Shock," the dear family doctor had nodded.

The skinny younger sister of Cecilia Tallis comes to see her. I don't like her. Her eyes are too wide, and she scarcely blinks, giving the impression of a harshly gazing statuette. Those eyes are disturbing. I saw her staring at the servant boy seated across from her. And damned if he did not visibly shiver under her gaze. Her small mouth is set in a long face that could be carved from stone it is so cold. The only reason anyone should know that she is not made of stone are those ghastly freckles that bespot her thin face. She could be pretty if she smiled and added rouge to those cheeks. But of course not. I know exactly how she will end up. She will grow into an old maid, made lonely by her knack for speaking what she thinks.

She stands perfectly still, waiting expectantly for me to leave her presence so she might speak to her cousin. I want to slap her, but she's done nothing wrong. Except for that delighted little smirk. She is proud of herself, little minx.

But I don't lay a finger on her, because I do not yet know what her game is, or if she is playing at all. If she truly believes what she said, then surely I have nothing to fear. The more she convinces herself of the truth, she will continue to steadfastly believe. And the more adults who believe this child's lies the more concrete they will be. Memory is a fickle thing, tampered by our doubts and biases. I know she saw me. But it wasn't me whom she saw with her cousin.

I remember the humid dark, the heat still so stifling even hours after the sun set. The slick grass sliding against my bare hip while I held Lola to me. Her thick, red curls absolutely scorching against my face. And the horrified gasp behind the light, quite literally, shed upon our situation.

I do not, by all means, resemble the servant boy she accused. His skin is tanned from working in the gardens day after day. No moustache. He is still a boy, growing into his appearance. A moustache on him would make him look idiotic, like an incompetent man desperately attempting to overcompensate. I wouldn't blame him if he was trying to overcompensate. He is rather short. If he were ever to meet another woman after this, she would have to be much shorter and terribly insecure. Women like that will settle for anyone because they are so afraid of spending their lives alone. I don't think they even pleasure themselves because they are so unfulfilled. Dreadfully childish.

Lola is no child, certainly not after this night. She was not before, despite the baby fat along her cheeks trying to fool me. Not Lola though. She is still growing into those hips. Perhaps she will be taller. I ache to see that. To see the frizz smoothed from her hair. To see her mouth rouged with lipstick and let those lips part like a wet cunt to bite delectably into my chocolate. Filling her mouth, sliding down her throat, warming her with sticky sweetness.

She licked her lips after eating the bar I had given her, but missed a corner of her mouth. I wanted to lick it off and feed it to her with my own tongue, and let her feel my moustache rubbing against her upper lip. Perhaps even slather her thighs with smears of chocolate and lick them up while her knees quiver on my shoulders. I would devour her. And she would bite her lip as she came because I would demand it of her. She is so obedient.

At dinner, I could smell her when she brushed past me to seat herself. Oh, naughty girl. That was a hint of _Tabu_ by Dana along her white neck. She must have snuck it from Cecilia. It did nothing to slow me down. It only drove me onward. _Tabu_ was no child's scent. and to be worn by one so young as herself was not amusing. It was positively orgasmic. _Tabu_ was a woman's musk. _Tabu_ was sexy. _Tabu_ was dangerous in the presence of a man, like a drug.

If not for her brothers, it would not have happened. If the little mouse had not interrupted dinner with the letter the boys had left, they certainly would have caught me. If it had not happened in the dark enclosure of the forest, it would have happened in an empty room somewhere in this cavernous house.

But I would not have changed the way it happened. I would not change the sweat trickling down my back as I followed behind her through the dark, her torch swinging back and forth as she called for her dimwitted brothers. I felt very much like a cat stalking its mouse. I had turned my own torch off and tucked it in the waistband of my trousers. Her shouting masked the sounds of my footsteps, and then she stopped in the little ravine surrounded on all sides by sloping hills. Her light darted this way and that as she realized she had reached a dead end and she ceased her shouting.

It all must have happened so quickly for her, but that was rather the point.

I pulled her to my chest, my hand over her mouth to keep her quiet. She fought, but I'm not certain she entirely knew why she was fighting. What I intended to do to her. She ended up on her knees, fighting against my hand, so I fisted my other round and round in her curls and ripped. She promptly quieted herself and let me lift her dress over her lower back. She was sweating. I crawled closer, nudging open her knees with my own and stuffed my hand down the front of her knickers.

I know no _man_ had ever treated her this way. Certainly deviant little boys on the cusp of manhood who desire to feel manly by not joining the army. I have not been a boy trying to prove himself a man for many years. I don't need to see her flounce naked from the toilet. I don't need to hear how she has never done this before. I don't need to tell her that I will be gentle. I wasn't. We didn't have time for gentleness, thankfully.

There was only time for chocolate coated savagery.

She gasped against my hand and let out a shuddering whine. Oh that noise. I wanted to hear it again.

My trousers caught over my erection while pulling them down.

My mouth was far too dry to produce enough saliva to make it comfortable. She panted against my palm, gasping for air as I rocked into her. She was warm. So warm. I pulled her down with me to lay on our sides now that I was inside her and buried my nose in her hair, my warm breaths dampening her curls. Sweat beaded under my hairline. She was so warm against me, around me. She shuddered with a moan when I squeezed her breasts. I ignored how small they were, fitting perfectly in my hand. First one, pinching the soft flesh, then paying the same treatment to the other. I am not a selfish lover. I give as good as they give. And she was very good.

Oh if only I could kiss her. Lick her mouth open and suck on her tongue, maybe taste the chocolate there she had eaten earlier. My mouth desperately needed her. I found her neck and sucked. I mouthed at her thundering pulse and licked at her heated skin.

Her fingers pulled at my hand again. Before she could claw, I bit her.

She squealed and went limp.

I grunted and pulled her leg up to open her wider and curled into her. The heat, her delightfully soft body, the scent of sweat and _Tabu_ drove me absolutely mad. I went back to sucking on her neck. I was so close. The heat was building. My stomach tightening.

And then, as the searing light cast over us, cold panic rushed through my body like an ice river. My head snapped up and I squinted, a damning action if there ever was one, and saw bright eyes widen. With a gasp, she dropped the torch and darkness fell over us once more. I threw Lola from me and fled. I scampered up the hill and through the trees, leaving my crime. I didn't even bother to pull my trousers up until I was hidden behind a patch of briars. Once there, I smoothed back my hair and wiped my forehead with my handkerchief. My vision was a bit spotty so I rested against a tree, catching my breath and my heartbeat slowed.

The little mouse had seen me. I ran my hand through my hair. She had seen me in the act.

And still, I returned to the mansion, where the police had been phoned. And they did not arrest me. No. According to the youngest Tallis, it was the servant boy, still missing, whom she believed was the perpetrator of the crime. "A sex maniac," she called him. And she produced a letter which he had written to Cecilia Tallis. I heard whispers of what was in it. Vulgar language. No language for that of a child.

Since we had nothing to do but wait for the criminal to return, I shed my jacket and loosened my bow tie and I dozed on their settee.

The rest of the evening passed in such drama, it is a relief to get away.

Leon insisted he take me to the train station. I allow him to accompany me. He is, after all, a friend.

"If you need anything, chap, do write me," I say.

"Of course, of course. You're welcome back anytime."

I take this into consideration.

It is Christmas when I repay his invitation. Cecilia Tallis is gone, along with the servant boy's mother, the only two who do not believe the little pointed face liar. Well, the only three, because I know the truth.

It has been six months since Lola has seen me. I wonder if she remembers the chocolate. Does she see it in the stores and buy it when she feels particularly scandalous?

The other girl is still there. Still dull, dressed in her white blouse and skirt and her hair pinned back by that one barrette.

I converse with Lola on the settee. She wears her hair pinned back with just a few curls framing her lovely face. Others of the Tallis family have come. And they look upon her with pitying eyes.

I do not pity her. I don't treat her like a child because she does not wish to behave like a child.

Unfortunately, such reasoning will not hold up in court. And so I must wait for the law to give her to me.

So I savor the small touches between us. A caress of my fingers upon her cheek, teasing tug of her hair. She laughs at that. There is one day when she touches me. She runs her finger over my moustache. I can see her thinking about its texture, how it feels against her skin. I ache to suckle her neck once more.

Her family and I become good friends. I let them tour my factory and I make sure to stand by their daughter whenever the magazines catch us in public. I let them make their own assumptions, until one day we might announce it officially.

I feed her the sweetest chocolate on our wedding night, and while she chews it slowly, puckering those plump, soft lips rouged sinfully red, I am on my knees. We are bathed in warm firelight, sweat dripping down our backs. The smell of chocolate blankets the air, filling our throats and still, _Tabu_ taunts me with her delectable _Au de la femme_.

My moustache rasps against her skin as we rock against each other. She gasps and her thighs tighten around me. I pause in my movements and look down at her. A lock of mussed hair falls over my forehead.

"What is it?" I pant against her lips.

She stares up at me, her mouth parted in a trembling O.

I shift my hips and her breath hitches and she shuts her eyes.

Because she can feel it better in the dark. She remembers in the dark. Remembers how I held her, how I wrestled her to the ground. Now, I make sure she feels every inch of me.

After, we lay there listening to the fire crackle. I blow out a puff of smoke from my cigarette and kiss her head.

She denies chocolate for weeks after this night. But the little fool will catch herself forgetting when I so sweetly offer to place a delicious square on her tongue and kiss her gently as it melts in her mouth.

The temptation draws her to me like Eve to the forbidden fruit, and what forbidden fruits are we. I'm sure she tastes her shame with every bite.

x

x

FIN


End file.
